Re: misconceptions about MIME [long]

Luc Ottavj ([email protected])
Wed, 28 Oct 1992 08:46:54 +0100

>If I wish to retrieve the document, say to view it, I might want to
>choose the available representation that is most appropriate for my
>purpose. Imagine my dismay to retrieve a 50 megabyte postscript file
>from an anonymous FTP archive, only to discover that it is in the
>newly announced Postscript level 4 format, or to try to edit it only
>to discover that it is in the (upwardly compatible but not parsable by
>my client) version 44 of Rich Text. In each case, the appropriateness
>of alternate sources and representations of a document would depend on
>information that is currently only available in-band.

i think you can avoid this if you make your MIME document descriptor
in the following way.
1- an ascii part containing an abstract for the document and
describing all the document representations (size, real format...)
2- for each representation an external-body ftp part

then the mime document itself is very short and after you read
the ascii part you can decide to transfer( or not )
only the representation that you want

Luc Ottavj | Email : [email protected]
INRIA U.R. de Sophia Antipolis | Phone : (33) 93 65 77 21
2004, Route des Lucioles BP 93 | Telex : 97 00 50 F
06902 Sophia Antipolis CEDEX France| Fax : (33) 93 65 76 02